Help with trees

[PraetorFigus]

fenix3279 said look in RTW/EB/Data/descr_vegetation and follow the directions there to lower the number of trees

Pobs linked a guide here https://forums.totalwar.org/vb/showthread.php?t=60901 that can help you change the density in that file,

my pet-peeve was the strange trees and with Pobs advice I got normal looking tree trunks! Hope this helps!

Edit: hehe, Pobs beat me to the post!

[^RaGe^]

Hi Rage,

yes look at that link I gave in my first post on this thread, apart from resizing the trees you can also change the 'forest templates' that are used to lay out the trees on the maps...


cheers,



Pobs

Stupid me, I should've read the previous posts first.

By the way, what kind of forests are those in Illyria? The ones in Gaul got reduced in size, but the trees in Illyria are as huge as ever.

[Centurio Nixalsverdrus]

Take a look at Bononia or Patavium or Dalminion and you see whether it worked or not.

Sorry, but the problem is not the size of the trees, but their wrong scaling in some tiles.

[Pobs]

Hi CN,

just checked those towns and you are right, it hasn't fixed that area.. I will look at which tree set are used there and try and fix that one too for you...


cheers,


Pobs

[BadKarma033]

I tried to use Pobs' solution with the EB 1.0 files and it worked pretty well at first, there were actually some clearings I could see my Epeirote army and fight in. Unfortunately when I got to a desert region I got hit with CTDs every time.

[Pobs]

Hi BadKarma,

PM me with your email address for the zipped folders to fix the missing palm tree model....


cheers,



Pobs

[^RaGe^]

Can you post a new thread about this on the unofficial mods sub-forum? I'm sure many people would appreciate it.

[Pobs]

Hi CN,

OK been looking at the remaining problem trees, which appear to be the vegetation type 'alpine dense forest', and affect the trees in the north Italian area you speak of. My first approach has been to spread the trees out rather than swap new models in... I think I have managed this now by editing the descr_vegetation.txt file in the EB/data folder. In this file under the section headed ' vegetation types' go the values marked in red below and change them as I have and you should see the big trees but spread out and varying in size a bit, so that they dont trap troops trying to pass through them... let me know if this solves your problems (you may have to delete the vegetation.db file after making the changes but try it first without). I will also look at trying to work out how to swap some nicer trees in, or at least get the scale of the trees to look better... remember to keep your original file incase you have problems with the changes !!


default trees around Bononia:




new spacing with the descr_vegetation.txt fix:







the text change to make this happen :




what I have done is to change the scale of the tree tremplate from 142 m across to 512 metres across as it is for the other forest types, and to change the height values to allow more variety in height .... it may not look like the centre of a dense mature forest anymore, but how many battles were fought in such conditions anyway ?...

It seems to work here so far and is savegame compatible as far as I can test it ...


cheers,


Pobs

[Centurio Nixalsverdrus]

First of all, thank you very much for your efforts and the work you put into this, Pobs.

I've done some testing with your suggestions tonight and here's what I found out:

• Changing the values in descr_vegetation.txt does not affect my trees in Bononia
• Deleting descr_vegetation.db produces even bigger trees but with a wider spacing, regardless of the descr_vegetation.txt applied
• descr_vegetation.db deleted, both Segestica (a "good-tree-city" with correct trees) and Bononia feature the so created standard-trees
• trying to load the battle-map view of Meroe for reference causes CTD
• the game does not create a new descr_vegetation.db after deleting it

[antisocialmunky]

We need to just make a tree mod. Its not that hard, we just need to do it.

[Pobs]

Hi CN,

hmmm... well, as I understand a mod-foldered mod like eb, it will look in the eb/data folder first, then if it can't find a file it will go to the rtw/data folder and check there. If that is true perhaps part of the problem lies with the vegetation.db file in your main rtw folder ?... again, as far as my understanding goes, the data is parsed into these database folders at game start-up ( hence the delay I suppose), so to see changes you will need to delete files and restart the game, I assume you were doing that ?...

ASM, couldn't agree more... if you find it easy though, perhaps you could do one for us, it might save a lot of time and experimentation ?... I repeat I am not an experienced modder of this game but a lot of the modders seem to have moved on to EB2 without addressing this problem so it is left to us players to see what we can do... I am more than happy to receive instruction or help from anyone on this...

:)

cheers,


Pobs

[Centurio Nixalsverdrus]

I tried with deleting the .db of the original RTW folder, though it has nothing to do with the EB trees I think. To no avail - you can't do without the .db file of EB and the .db file of RTW is useless to us.

But I have noted the position of known good-tree / bad-tree locations on EBs map and then taken a look at MAP_CLIMATES. It's not so nice but I think clearly visible: white are locations of giant trees, black of normal trees. The white dots are all in the green area, which marks the "alpine" kind of tree methinks. Perhaps it would be possible to just change the alpine colour to the northern europe colour?

[Pobs]

Hi CN,

yes I take your point on doing away with the 'alpine dense forest' but I am not sure where the vegetation types for the areas are stored. I am not sure that changing the climate map is the best way to go since it is probably used to calculate other things like fertility of the land, frequency of floods, movement rates etc.... but as long as you back up your game files then it might be worth a look...

I have been fiddling around with the values in the descr_vegetation.txt file and am sloooowly beginning to understand how it works... for instance if you dont have a .db file in the EB/data folder I think the game goes to the main RTW/data folder, finds the db file in there and then uses the files from that folder for its info. I say that because after deleting the db file from the EB/data folder I found making changes to the txt file in that folder didn't seem to affect the game, but with a db file in, they did... That previous change to the txt file I suggested ( changing the first value to 512) did spread out the big trees in my set-up, but it also spread out all the other trees that use the default forest layout !!! so I got very open forests for all types of trees, even though I only changed it in the one section for the dense alpine forest ??... strange... I am going to try swapping the df (dense forest) tree models out of the section on 'alpine dense forest' in the txt file and see if the game will use another tree... watch this space for the results :)...

cheers,


Pobs

edit : looks like we aren't the first ones to have problems with adding trees to -mod foldered mods !! look here :

https://forums.totalwar.org/vb/showthread.php?t=66201

and it looks like you are right about changing the climates map to get rid of the alpine tree type..

cheers,

Pobs

[Pobs]

Hi CN,

yep, tried your idea with the climates map and it works to get rid of the last 'giant forests'... I swapped it for the colour of the german forest area and then deleted the map.rwm file and let it make a new one and the trees in the alps are now nice and small.... it seems to be perfectly savegame compatible with my romani game too... so no problems there.


cheers,


Pobs

[Centurio Nixalsverdrus]

Really? Weird... I will try it too.

[Laza]

And maybe u could offer the new file for download, too!

[Pobs]

Laza,

I will email you a copy to try out.

cheers,


Pobs

[Pobs]

Hi Laza,

file e-mailed to you, let me know if it works OK for you.


cheers,


Pobs

[Laza]

Custom battle maps like chaucii woodland arent affected at all. oO Ive tried a few siege battles with the sweboz in their home territory and the edge of every battle map still had lots of giant trees. :(

Thx anyway!